Investigation On Performance Of A Pulse Tube Cooler Driven By A Hybrid Thermoacoustic Engine

Investigation on thermoacoustic has been one of the focuses in energy and power fields in recent years. This results from two facts, one is that the pulse tube cooler driven by a thermoacoustic engine has no moving parts and can be widely applied in many high techniques such as space, military and so on. Especially, it can also be applied in natural gas liquefaction. The other is that it benefits for environment protection by using environment friendly working substances such as inertia gases. Besides, thermoacoustic machines can be directly driven by low quality heat power like solar energy and waste heat, which can not only improve the system efficiency but also be significant for the occasions shortage of electrical power.After a detailed review on the historical developments of the research on thermoacoustic, the present work focuses on the following sections:The fundamental theories of thermoacoustic effects are explained. Also acoustic power and acoustic power dissipation theories are introduced in details.The experimental measurement system based on Labview platform includes the hardware arrangement and software realization. Some typical methods in acoustic power measurement, including their theories, instruments, characteristics and applications are introduced in details. After analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of these methods, the variable load method is adopted in this paper.Performance of a pulse tube cooler driven by a hybrid thermoacoustic engine has been further investigated including pressure, output and refrigeration characteristics. With working pressure and heating power of 2.6 MPa and 2300 W respectively, the maximum output power 122 W has been obtained at 51 Hz working frequency. And with 2.8 MPa working pressure, 2500 W heating power, 7 meters resonance tube length, the thermoacoustically driven pulse tube cooler has reached 80.9 K refrigeration temperature at 45 Hz.